Culture Watch

A small cultural aspect which I found really interesting was the matrimony pages in the weekend paper; imagine 3500 classified ads full of so many detailed stats it would up ESPN to shame. Arranged marriages is still a very big deal, but for some reason I didn't expect it to be so organized. They're divided up broadly by caste, though if the girl is over 26 there is usually no caste requirement. They also all list the income of the guy, and occationally the dowry of the girl (I think).

One of the interesting population projections right now is that Indians are selectively keeping boy babies over girl babies at about a rate of 10:7, partially because to a need to provide a dowry for a girl. It will be interesting as eligible women become scarcer and scarcer to see if the need for dowries declines; there's likely a cool Econ paper in there somewhere. Also a possible cool paper is to see how much a given caste level is worth--how much more or less of a dowry can be provided to get someone to marry outside their caste?